Poor Thinking Process

The best thing I can do for my chess is to improve my thinking process, which is one of my greatest weaknesses. Below are some of the reasons why it my thinking process just plain stinks.

Not considering the consequences of a move at least 3 ply deep on every play.

Focusing too much on my plan, and not worrying about my opponent’s plan.

Not following a standard though process method.

Not considering the most aggressive candidate moves.

Poor candidate move selection. This includes.

not considering aggressive moves

retained image errors.

Worrying about misconceived threats, or not choosing candidates because of worries about King safety.

Not looking for tactics during my opponent’s move.

Not looking at the whole board. This leads to underutilized pieces at best and a surprise checkmate at worse.

Poor evaluation of the position.

Playing without a plan.

Playing too much blitz. Not that blitz games are bad, but they do not allow you to apply a though process and it does not allow you to practice your analysis and evaluation skills. All improving players should stay away from blitz until we have developed a consistent and applicable thought process via games played at long time controls.

That’s it for now, I’ll add more in time. Feel free to leave comments on how you can improve your thought process.

2 thoughts on “Poor Thinking Process”

I got a simple one for ya; Checks, captures, threats, combinations. To keep things short, and practical. After all, it’s got to be something you can do with each move. Now, you can write yourself up a list of a 100 things, but you’ll probably run out of time at the first move (if you’re on the clock) 😉